


When the Moon is in the Seventh House

by SegaBarrett



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Horses, Magic, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28071813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Enola finds a mystery wherever she goes.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	When the Moon is in the Seventh House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Enola Holmes, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Song title from "Aquarius".

“Quite the place you’ve got here,” Sherlock Holmes mused as he looked over his younger sister’s new flat. “It doesn’t look as if you’ve taken to decorating it as of yet, however.”

“I’ve been too busy,” Enola replied. 

“Busy doing what?” 

“Honing my skills. Figuring things out. Making decisions.”

“Decisions as to what? Now that you aren’t going to be trapped in a finishing school, it seems as if your options are quite open. Simply go where the wind takes you, if that is what you desire.”

“I don’t know what I desire,” Enola replied, moving to sit in the chair in the center of the room. “I want to be significant. Like you. But not like you – apart from you.”

“Apart from me, yes, but it is a detective what you dream of being?” Sherlock inquired, taking a spot in a chair near the door. “You acquitted yourself famously in the past. But honing your skills would not be remiss. And those skills could do you well in any career, if you tire of the life that we lead. It is a sometimes exciting life, Enola, but not a particularly profitable one. I hope you enjoy eating soups night after night.”

“I don’t worry about eating fancy things and wearing fancy clothes,” Enola replied, “And I would hope that you would know this about me by now. If I had wanted all of that, I would have stayed in that finishing school and fished myself some sort of husband or other. Sherlock, I wish to live.”

“You’ve lived an entire life in the past few weeks,” Sherlock mused.

“Perhaps I have. But I’m not even seventeen yet, and I need to figure out what I plan to do at least until eighteen. Teach me deductive reasoning, set me up as your apprentice… whatever you think is best!”

Sherlock smiled.

“Well, I suppose that could work. I could use an apprentice. After all, I am in rather high demand… Tomorrow, we'll leave for the country, and we can begin in earnest.”

“It’s a deal,” Enola replied. When Sherlock walked out the door, she pumped her fist in the air. She had waited for this day for years, and now it would finally come to pass. She decided she had better get a good night’s sleep.

***

In the morning, they went to the train station. After her last experience on a train had ended with her hopping off of it as it barreled along, she was slightly reluctant to get back on another. 

But she climbed into a compartment and peeked out the window, taking a look at the terrain. Sherlock, meanwhile, was up in another compartment, as according to him, he needed complete silence to work on his writing, or else he would need to rip it up and start it over again.

Enola wondered why anyone would want to be a genius when they seemed to have so many demands for simple day-to-day life. She figured she would be happy enough just being interesting.

She couldn’t have worked in complete silence, anyway. The world around her seemed to be full of everything, amazing things that she needed to learn if she was going to be a good detective. 

Right now, in fact, a cart was being pushed down the aisle of the train, and Enola could hear the attendant talking to somebody else.

“We’re going to have to tell them,” said a man’s voice. “We can’t keep hiding it forever.”

“I’m not going to tell them,” the attendant fired back, “So stop asking. It is not an option.”

Enola craned her head a little bit, moving closer to the door to the compartment. Were the two having some kind of a wild affair? It wasn’t necessarily political intrigue, but it could do for something to listen to for the rest of the train journey.

She pulled out a notebook and listened for what one of them might say next – they would have to leave some clue to who they were and what their motivation was, wouldn’t they? And then Enola would be ready.

She also couldn’t ignore the fact that on her last train journey, one of the cases had quite literally found her. 

“We can’t tell anyone. No one would believe us.” That was the attendant, all over again, and now Enola’s brain began to work overtime. She wasn’t speaking of an affair, clearly, because that would be quite believable to anyone who was a fan of scandal. No, there was something else afoot here.

“But this is amazing. It’s miraculous,” the man continued. 

“That’s the kind of thing that men like you always say, when it’s someone else you’re trying to prop up for your own ends.”

“Come on, Cordelia. It isn’t like that. You know that.”

Cordelia, Enola jotted down. Maybe she could get a hold of the list of employees and figure out if Cordelia had a last name. But who would she get it from? 

She considered asking Sherlock for help, but then blanched at the idea. She had gotten quite far on her own, and she didn’t want to start asking him for assistance now. Not only that, but if she was going to be a consulting detective, she would have to show her brother exactly what she could do.

And that meant figuring it out herself.

The attendant was heard to make a huff and then continued along her path, and Enola didn’t hear the man any more after that. She waited a moment and then slowly rose from her seat and pulled back the door to the compartment, peeking through. There was no one in the aisle and, best of all, no Sherlock peeking back at her. 

She crept into the aisle and tried to figure out where “Cordelia” and the man had gotten off to – they had to be around here somewhere. More importantly, the man’s compartment was probably around here somewhere, as long as he was a passenger. 

“Well, here goes nothing.”

She quickly found an attendant’s uniform hanging on the side of one compartment, and a trolley at the end of the aisle. She briefly wondered where the owner of both of these items had gotten off to, but then assured herself that they were unlikely to miss it as long as she only used the disguise for a little while.

Otherwise, she might run into one very angry attendant, and possibly the same one she was trying to get information about.

She whistled as she pushed the trolley down the aisle, ignoring a few people poking their heads out of compartments and inquiring whether she could get them some tea.

Most of the compartments seemed to be occupied, but near the end of the aisle, Enola found a door slid half open. She slipped it open the rest of the way and then stepped inside, looking around to see if anything jumped out at her.

At the edge of one of the seats in the compartment was a stack of notebooks, and Enola leaned forward to scoop one up and flip through it, before closing the door behind her. The pages were full of what looked to be some kind of formulas. 

There was a sudden bang against the divider, and Enola pressed herself back against the wall as flatly as possible.

Well, this was going well, she thought to herself. She was no doubt going to get spoken with by, well, somebody, about breaking into someone’s compartment.

But that was, after all, the best part.

Her thoughts were broken up by the sound of someone opening the door to the compartment.

She threw one of the notebooks under her arm – they’d no doubt notice if all of them were missing, so she would have to take her chances on getting the “right” one and hope that she could get back here if it wasn’t – and, with a few false starts, climbed up into the luggage section above the seats. 

It had worked before, after all, even though she hadn’t been the one to do it. The luggage rack was roomy enough for her to fit up there snugly, though she would have to come down eventually. She would also have to hope that Sherlock wasn’t considering going back to check on her and then wondering where she had gotten off to. She had to hope he wouldn’t suddenly become the type to make a fuss.

A woman in an attendant’s uniform – probably Cordelia, Enola figured – opened the door and stepped inside, looking around before grabbing up one of the notebooks. She looked around again, with a gaze of suspicion, but to Enola’s ever-lasting relief, did not look up.

Instead, she grabbed the notebook and then stepped back out into the hallway.

When her footsteps were far enough away in the distance, Enola attempted to climb down but succeeded in losing her footing, rolling and hitting the ground, and only at the last minute avoiding yelling out a loud curse. 

With the notebook tucked in under her arm, she made it back to her own compartment in just enough time for Sherlock to open the door, look around with some suspicion, and then ask, “How have you been? I hope I have not been neglecting you on this journey – I just have so much work to do.”

Enola plastered on a big smile.

“No, nothing,” she replied. “I’ve just been reading and thinking about what I’m going to do once I begin my study of deductive reasoning. I’ve actually had some excellent time with which to clear my head.”

“Well, we’re almost there. We’ll visit in with our mother,” Sherlock paused and let out a little sigh, “And then we will be quite on our way. I have a few cases I’d like for you to look over, to see where your level is at currently. So we can see where you need to improve.”

“Like a test?” Enola retorted, rolling her eyes. “This is making it sound like you’re putting me in your own version of finishing school after all.”

“Trust me,” Sherlock replied, “I am quite unfinished, and I have a feeling you will remain so as well.”

***

“This is our stop,” Sherlock told her about ten minutes later, “And we have some company meeting us once we depart.”

Enola gave a sad look back at the train as they disembarked, wondering whether she would ever figure out what had been going on with the attendant and her lover. Maybe some mysteries just weren’t meant to be solved.

It went out of her mind a moment later when she noticed, standing at the platform, her mother, dressed in a long black coat, and accompanied by a somewhat harried-looking Mrs. Lane.

“Mother!” Enola exclaimed, running into her arms. “I had no idea you would be here. Since when?”

Eudoria brushed off the question. 

“I’m here now. I heard that Sherlock is taking you under his wing.” She gave her son a look that seemed to be surveying, but also a bit suspicious. “Though I think there’s quite a few things that you can teach him, too. Are we still going back to yours, Sherlock?”

“Indeed,” Sherlock agreed. “You’ve been staying nearby?”

“I go here and there,” Eudoria explained. 

“And Mrs. Lane?” Sherlock pressed, raising an eyebrow.

“She’s been a constant source of comfort.”

“And she’s been a constant source of… something,” Mrs. Lane quipped.

Enola cracked a smile, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the mystery uncoupled and left to sit back on the train, without her riding along.

She would have to figure it out from her new four walls. And maybe that was the first lesson that she was going to have to learn – how to be frustrated.

***

Sherlock spent the day on the large, sprawling countryside teaching her all of the deductive tricks of the trade. How to notice things in people’s stride, their walk, and the way that they stepped – and how to tell if someone was lying about something in ten seconds or less.

Eudoria spent the day reminding Enola how to shoot an arrow, how to spot a constellation, and where most of the places in Homer’s _Odyssey_ probably were.

Mrs. Lane spent the day telling Enola that she really needed to learn to pick up after herself and stop leaving things everywhere, such as “this notebook – I could have easily tossed this in the rubbish, mind you.”

Enola had nearly forgotten about that notebook, by sheer force of will, throughout the day’s events, but now as the sun went down, she curled up into bed and looked it over once more.

The pages were full of writing, yes, but much more interesting were the diagrams that were sprawled over the pages, written in some kind of thick black ink. They seemed to be pointing out some kind of place – X, as usual, marking the spot – and setting a series of positions for people to gather around the X.

Maybe that mystery wasn’t quite solved yet, and maybe it wouldn’t be forced to remain unsolved, either. Enola would have jumped for joy if it wouldn’t have woken up the entire house. 

Instead, there was only one person she needed to wake up.

“Mother,” Enola called at Eudoria’s door, tapping gently against the wood. The door opened a crack a moment later, and Eudoria looked over her daughter with a slow realization.

“What is it that you’re planning to sneak out to do?”

“I need to now know to get to this location,” Enola replied, pointing at the diagram, “I’ve matched it up with this atlas,” she presented the one that she had found in a shelf in her room, placed there meticulously. Sherlock was a meticulous man, after all. “And it looks like it’s only a few miles down the road.”

Eudoria smiled.

“I mean, you could take a carriage and be there in an hour,” she said, “There’s a few horses in the stable out back.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Enola said, glad that her mother had opted not to ask too many questions. 

She rushed down to the stable and looked around – there were three horses to choose from, and she looked back and forth between the horses and the carriage and decided that there may be a benefit to cutting out the middleman. A cream-colored horse in the middle peeked over at her, and she took that as a sign of sorts.

“Hi, Horsey,” she said, and picked a saddle off the wall to placed on him. “I don’t know exactly what my plan is, but I’m glad that you’re here to help me, old boy.”

She mounted the horse and pulled back on the reins with some trepidation. The horse looked back at her as if to ask “if you don’t know what your plan is, then I don’t know what you expect from me” but then seemed to take pity and started at a gallop in the direction of the mark on the map.

***

The moon was a bright white in the sky when Enola and her trusty steed made it to the edge of the small river. 

Standing at the edge, on the other side, were a couple. 

As soon as the woman spoke up, Enola recognized her voice as that of the attendant.

“It’s almost ready,” she mused, and the man standing beside her played with the buttons of his coat.

“Are you almost done, Cordelia?” he inquired, “It’s blistering cold out here.”

“You wanted to see how it’s done,” she reminded him, “Don’t miss it because you can’t handle a little cold weather.”

Enola craned forward, trying to watch while staying out of view, and almost let a gasp escape from her when a stream of light appeared to emerge from Cordelia’s hands.

Moonlight, it seemed.

The secret that the two had been sharing hadn’t been some nefarious plot at all, but something magical.

Something that Enola knew that Sherlock would never have been able to summon an explanation for.

The light danced, hopping across Cordelia’s fingers and then, in front of her companion’s flabbergasted expression.

“You can really do it,” he managed, “I can barely believe it.”

“Never doubt a woman who tells you she’s magic,” Cordelia retorted, but then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips.

And that was kind of magical, too.

***

It was late when Enola made it back to the house, and the moon was still shining in the sky overhead.

Her mother was sitting at the table with Mrs. Lane, chatting in quiet tones. 

Sherlock was pacing up and down the steps.

“Hello,” Enola said as she made her way to the staircase.

“Where have you…” Sherlock began, and Eudoria turned to her son and fixed him with a look.

“You’re the detective. You should already know.”

And that was that.

**Fin**


End file.
